How to Survive a Data Disaster

Even though disasters are mostly unpredictable, most organizations fear disaster. If disaster strikes, recovering from it could cost you thousands of dollars, as well as the loss of customers' good faith.

Having a plan to save your business from disturbances will help you get back on track.

While most businesses rely on technology to run their day-to-day processes such as email, Word docs, customer information and ordering systems, inventory, accounting, other companies are all built on tech.

If something disastrous were to happen, your business could completely stop, whether it is based on tech or 'just' a means to get your work done.

Disasters such as floods, electrical storms, hurricanes, fires and people who leave with your passwords or source code could create a lot of trouble if you don't have a backup plan.

What's included in a plan?

Disaster plans can cover everything from how to get out of your store or office during a fire drill, to how to get back up and running if your servers are underwater. If you think about staying in business during a disaster, as well as recovery, you'll be in the best shape you could be.

While it's important to customize a plan for your business, every plan should include:

Since it is a fact that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, it's important to understand how your plan works. You need to ask some questions to make sure you have full coverage for your business:

Does your plan include an inventory of mission critical business processes and data?

When was the last time anyone reviewed your plan? Tested your plan?

Is cyber attack preparedness included in your current plan?

How much depends upon human intervention?

Evaluate Cloud Solutions

Automating your solution is key to ensuring success since you'll have other priorities more important than virtual machines during a disaster.

A cloud solution can help you recover quickly. It's less expensive than having your own datacenter to support and protect. It's a practical solution for a business, whether it's large or small. Most importantly, it makes especially good financial sense for a smaller organization.

Not all cloud providers are equal, so you'll need to do some research to compare. A few considerations:

Do they offer a hybrid solution, so that you can keep some data on-premise as well as in the cloud?

Do they offer metered service so that you can save even more money by 'turning off' services when you don't need them?

Is the service easy to use, with good support for your team?

Do they offer geo-redundancy?

Are they compliant with your industry?

Is the cloud safe?

There have been times when the cloud failed companies because the data was only stored in one location. It was also based in the same region as the company, which is an obvious mistake.

With the Microsoft cloud, you can get 'geo-redundancy,' which means that your data is in more than one location. If your area is hit with a hurricane, along with floods and electrical storms, your data would be safe in a datacenter across the country.

Your company data will also be available even during the storm.

We'd love to meet you and discuss your plans for keeping your business running. We're happy to set up a FREE consultation to review your plan, so call us or send an email.